China's used vehicle sales set to surge by 2012

Although China's used car sales increased by a slower 3 percent last year over 2007, they are set to accelerate more than 3 times to 9 million units by 2012 and to grow more rapidly after that, industry observers said.

More than 2.73 million second-hand vehicles were sold last year, according to the China Automobile Dealers Association. But the sales increase was a drop from double-digit growth in previous years and a sharp decline from 27.8 percent for 2007 as the market was also impacted by the global financial crisis and a slowing domestic economy.

But the value of used car trading climbed 10 percent to 118.3 billion yuan (US$17.3 billion) last year.

China's used car market took off in 2000, thanks to the boom in the automotive industry and sedans sold better compared with multi-purpose vehicles and sport-utility vehicles. But used-car sales measured one-third of the sales of new cars in China last year while in the United States, they took up more than 3 times the sales of new cars and in Germany they were twice the rate.

Motor experts said that the used car market in China faces problems including a lack of a unified assessment standard on vehicle quality and a pricing mechanism.